Take your pick. Choose all the definitions, for with one exception — No. 4 — they're all here in Ali Smith's novel chock-full of art. Hold on: The cover may qualify for No. 4, “Artificial; not genuine.” See for yourself.

As for the novel itself, what a treat. The first words are “The twelvemonth and a day being up, I was still at a loss.” The narrator is addressing a “you” who is dead but reappears occasionally as a ghost. Shortly, however, because the voice is so clear, so funny, so sad, so intimate, we realize that there is another “you,” and that it is us (or we). She is taking us with her through her grieving, and in the end we are not the same as when we began. Neither is she; neither will you be.

The novel begins in “our study,” where desk and books now belong to her. On the lover's desk “what you'd been working on last was still neatly piled.” It is this “unfinished stuff” that our narrator immerses herself in, the “stuff” being a series of lectures about art and literature (and are the lectures delivered by Smith herself at St. Anne's College, Oxford).

The individual lectures are titled “On time,” “On form,” “On edge” and “On offer and on reflection.” So there we have an organization, a framework within which we can explore, along with the narrator, the poetry, the essays, the novels and short stories of an astounding array of artists — from ancient cave paintings to Gilgamesh through Charlie Chaplin to José Saramago and beyond. Doris Day shows up, as does Beyoncé, as do Michelangelo and Margaret Atwood, and let us never forget Harpo Marx, his pockets deep, his coat flapping.

What holds it all together? “Oliver Twist,” the book she takes down in the beginning of the book and finishes by the end.

This novel is a feast for readers. It is an introduction to some artists and a fond look back at familiar names. The lectures argue for the worth, the worthiness of books. But to the story — and, yes, there is one. Will the narrator come through this period of mourning?

Our narrator does do things; that is, she does not simply sit and mourn.

“Artful” is a love story full of everything — mind and body, past, present and future.